We have all been there. We head out for a day of photography fun. Some landscapes, architecture, or maybe some street photography. You go about the shoot and end up with a heap of photos. You start going through them and work out what you want to cull and what you want to keep. Then you get to thinking about what sort of editing (if any) you want to do.
One of the first questions I ask myself is…. Should this photo be colour, or black and white?
Waaay back when the first step in taking a photo was to buy a roll of film, the choice of colour or black and white was made upfront. It made you approach the shoot in a different manner. You knew if what you were going to shoot was black and white because that’s the film you had! You could shoot colour and later convert it to black and white, but that meant sending a long time in the darkroom.
Film
The black and white vs colour decision had to be made at this point.
We now have the luxury of being able to decide on the exact chromatic qualities of our photos after we’ve taken them. That’s the easy part. What’s not always so easy is determining whether an image should be presented in colour or black and white. There is no objectively right or wrong answer to this, but there are some basic principles to keep in mind that can help you with your decision.
What Role Does Color Play in the Photo?
This is very subjective. But its something we (as creators) should be thinking about. It’s easy enough to say the colour is important. After all, we see in colour, so shouldn’t our photos be colour?
Well, sometimes the colour can be a distraction, but there are also times where colour is very important to the image. You couldn’t shoot a scene that has a prominent rainbow flowing over it and expect it to look great in black and white. Or imagine this garden of tulips. This image would not look nearly as good in black and white.
On the other hand. If an image is really washed out because of strong lighting that can’t be fixed in editing, then you may want to consider it as a black and white image. Or if the sky is clear without a wisp of cloud, or some high contrasting cloud, you may want to consider the image as black and white.
What about strong contrasts in the image?
If an image naturally has lots of high contrasting B&W tones like the photo above (white, black and grey) with very little colour, then it could already be considered as a B&W image to edit.
FINAL THOUGHTS
This is a very subjective topic. It’s your photo, it’s your decision. There are photographers who work only in colour and those that work only in black and white. Most of us fall in the middle somewhere.
These days, given that it’s so simple to convert a colour image into black and white, why not try it for a while?
EXERCISE
Today, go for a walk around your home. Walk no more than 100 meters from your front door and take no less than 10 photos. Then, convert each one of those to black and white in your editing program of choice. You will be surprised how it gets you thinking about the subjects you shot.
